Tag Archives: Lori Carlson

A little background information that I know about Annie Dillard. She was married to the writer and professor, Richard Dillard. Richard Dillard taught, at the time of my attendance, Writing and Literature at Hollins College (now Hollins University). His ex-wife, Annie, was a bit of a fascination to me because I wondered what drove her to marry a man like Richard, for whom I cared little as a student. I could only surmise that perhaps during the late 60s and early 70s when they were married, Richard was perhaps a different sort of man. Annie Dillard is best known for Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.

And now for the Daily Musing… Monica Wood asks, “How will you spend this day?”

~*~*~*~

My mind wants to dance and feel the rhythm of the beat, beat, beat in my head. Dance and twirl.. movements my feet can no longer perform. These poor feet still clouded with wool socks. O Chemo! what did you do to me? You’ve stolen my jazz, taken away my snazzy razzamatazz. There is nothing more I can do.

In reality, I will sleep the majority of my day away. Hopefully awakening at some midday o’clock and force myself to remain awake. The fatigue has returned and the pains in my abdomen, hips and legs. Not as intensely as before, but it is there and it frightens me. So I will call the oncologist today and report what I am experiencing. I am not sure if this should wait until October. Please, don’t let it be cancer again!

So this day, while my mind swings to its own beat, I will worry and pray — candles lit, prayer beads in hand, legs crossed as I chant.

I pass her daily,
she’s just like me,
but not me.
She is dark, a ghostly shell,
some alter ego
deliberately mimicking me;
Or is this my own dark soul,
the darkened wretched me?
There she goes again.
but this time she notices me in the passing.
Will she ponder the same questions as I?

How could she have known
my obsession for Gothic novels?
She couldn’t have known that years later
a cacoethes would emerge,
that hundreds would be spent
trying to get them back to me.
One lapse of judgement led
to a lifetime of irresistible urges…
There’s another sale on eBay –
I cannot resist this deep desire any longer.

Beneath the blue breaths
of winter, death gratefully welcomes
the young, scattering sonnets
white with innocence, hollow rhymes.
They speak of lost love upon the seas,
fair maidens and twilight moments,
verse upon verse of nothingness,
thrills they will never know,
never feel nor see; O, these romantics!
Your works are cocooned for eternity;
Death has come too soon for you.

This night I shall dream
of your bedazzling Puple hair and Lion-eyes.
Wrapped in the echoes of your eyes-music,
I long to sip from your peachful lips.
In my dreams, I soar on your plush pinkness —
skimming vast continents with hands and lips.
The depths of all the oceans of the universe
shall never separate our entwined bodies.
Brilliant as enthralling lust,
the seas greet us from afar.
In the twilight we feast on chocolate-covered
strawberries and tender lovehearts
Adorned in white silk, we pluck
our raining love chimes from our thighs.
I press the heart that you wear around your neck
against my hands so that our hearts melt into one.
You will always be my little Aphrodite,
the Lion of my own eyes of love.